Saturday, August 31, 2013

The wireless network with a mile-wide range that the “internet of things” could be built on - Quartz

“I think the internet of things is not going to start with products, but projects,” says Taylor. His goal is to use the current crowd-funding effort for Flutter
to pay for the coding of the software protocol that will run Flutter,
since the microchips it uses are already available from manufacturers.
The resulting software will allow Flutter to create a “mesh network,”
which would allow individual Flutter radios to re-transmit data from any
other Flutter radio that’s in range, potentially giving hobbyists or
startups the ability to cover whole cities with networks of Flutter
radios and their attached sensors.

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Taylor’s
ultimate goal is to create a system that answers the fundamental needs
of all objects in the internet of things, including good range, low
power consumption, and just enough speed to get the job done—up to 600
kilobits a second, or about 1/20th the speed of a typical home Wi-Fi
connection. One reason for that slow speed is that lower-bandwidth
signals, transmitted in the 915 Mhz range in which Flutter operates,
travel further. These speeds are more than sufficient when the goal is
transmitting sensor readings, which are typically very short strings of
data.